jewelry making experiment

We all know I suck at jewelry making...so my hubby took me on a tour of the jewelry making isle at Walmart and told me some basics.  I got a few things to play with and came up with this;

Now, for my first attempt I think it turned out decent. Professionals would probably laugh though.  I picked beads that co-ordinated best with my colour scheme from the poor Walmart selection. They're just cheap glass beads, but I wasn't about to splurge on good beads for practice.  What I did was take the string of the beads in the upper left corner and add the purple beads, using the little wire things. But, as I didn't take apart/re-atatch the mossy beads to the metal things....I'm not real sure if it counts as something I have made???

  I did make the earrings from scratch though, in a very simple Italian drop fashion.  The necklace is definitely not based off of anything period, but it matches the dress...and like I said, its my first real success with playing with jewelry bits, so it's staying for now.  Hopefully it will all stay together!!

I am very much open to suggestions and tips and constructive criticism in this area!!

Camicia sleeves finished

Sleeves are finished, just need to put buttons on the cuffs.  The rest of the camicia should go fairly quickly. I am planning wide front/back pieces with no side gores, so construction will be simple. Hopefully I'll have it done sometime this week.

I'm not very happy with how the embroidery turned out. It looks allot plainer than I was hoping, but at least its something, and I don't really feel like putting much more work into a cotton camicia.

The pieces of the camicia are roll-hemmed as usual. But just to jazz it up a bit I joined the pieces with herringbone stitches in two different colors, white and blue. It took a bit of concentration at first to get the thread to go over or under the right thread to get an even pattern, but after I figured it out it went pretty quick.

There are four button loops on each cuff. I made then as I normally do, looping the thread through the fabric twice and then going over it with button-hole stitches. But on these, I also joined the bottom half or so of each side of each loop to create a 'shank'. This seemed the best way to do it with the pleats being how they are. I thought about doing hook and eye, but chose not too as I always have problems with them slipping apart to easy or not at all.

I ended sewing the pleats down to strips of bias tape on the inside at about 2 inch increments. I loosely marked the lines with water soluble pen, which I will wash out once I have the pleating around the neckline complete.

And...I have very little planned for the next two weeks, so hopefully I shall be able to get quite a bit of sewing accomplished and 'catch-up' for a little while at least.

Almost done with Camicia embroidery

The end is in sight for the embroidery. I have all the motifs embroidered on both the main sleeve pieces, with the exception of the metallic collars for the hounds on one. And then I have to start from scratch with the embroidery on the gussets, but those should only take a few hours each. Because I was bored with the embroidery I went ahead and hemmed the finished sleeve piece by hand and pinned down the cuff pleats to where I think they ought to be and it looks pretty good. I just need to decide if I am going to sew them down by whipstitching them down invisibly in the back or running several rows of tiny stitches horizontally across the cuff. 

I also finished my pair of bodies.  My dress form is a little bigger in the bust than I am, even at its smallest,  so on me there is no or little gap in the front.

My next goal is too finish the camicia before I get distracted with other parts of the project. If I am very lucky I should get everything embroidered and hemmed this weekend and then can hopefully join all the pieces next week. 

Petticoat

So I was getting terribly upset at myself for my measly progress on my hand work projects, and due to various outdoor actives (putting up a fence and wielding a sledgehammer to pound posts in) my hands were very sore and bruised. So I decided what I needed to do was whip something out by machine.

I had just over three yards of beautiful lilac colored linen to make both a petticoat and be the outside of a pair of bodies. It took some careful planning and squeezing, but I got all the pieces cut out without problem. The petticoat is trimmed with some vintage cotton percale binding that needed used up, as well as some very sturdy silver gimp braid I scored on Ebay. It is knife pleated to a two piece waistband and closes with metal buttons on both sides. I thought I had measured very carefully the length of what the skirt needed to be, as I hemmed it and sewed the trim on before attaching the waistband so that the top of the trim in front could be neatly pleated in as well. But the petticoat ended up being about an inch and a half too long. So I also added a small pleat just above the bottom trim to make it the right length, and fortunately achieved more periodness by doing so.  I have yet to make a few lucet cords to attach to the waistband so that it can be tied up through the bodies.

My pair of bodies is a mishmash of two different decades (not very accurate of me but it suites my needs). It is unboned, front closing, and shaped very much like that of Eleanora's burial stays, but has the waist tabs, the spiral lacing  and the means to lace the petticoat up through its waist as in Alessandro Allori's 'Woman at her Toilet' c1575. The outer is the lilac linen and it is lined with two layers of gray cotton. I am currently working the eyelets by hand and should hopefully finish that today.

I also started stringing a necklace, but my limited knowledge on jewelry making has made me give up. I may try another method soon. I also attempted starting to shape the frame for my balzo, but as there isn't a craft store in town that I know of, and no place to find reeds, I was using very young skinny branches from a tree outside. I steamed them and wired a few together and fiddled with it for a while but just couldn't get it and gave up on that too.  So...heres hoping I have an epiphany regarding balzo construction in the near future. Maybe I'll whip out a soccaccia today or tomorrow just so I have something for layer four, and as layer two is almost complete, I can not rush too much with the embroidery and appliqué on the other two layers. I have several very busy months ahead with travel and events, so I really don't know if I'll get much done this year.

way behind.....

So, we had an awesome vacation! It was both Zach's and my first time to see the ocean, and we stayed in a very cute little hotel by the coast with his brother and his wife. Also got to stop at the hugest fabric store in the south; Sir's Fabrics in Tennessee. It went on and on and on and on....unfortunately I had to limit my spending and volume of what I got since we were flying home.

And in other news....I got almost nothing done on the embroidery for my camicia and nothing else accomplished at all, and feel so far behind!! Plus now there's laundry and cleaning and were leaving again for the weekend.....So feeling very overwhelmed and under accomplished next to the rest of you who are doing IRCC stuff. Gonna take my embroidery again this weekend and see if I can't get more done on it.

But right now I'm off to start laundry and see If I can't make a dent in the pile of miscellany that is exponentially reproducing itself on the table....

Revised border applique

Version two of the applique design turned out much better than the first. I traced it onto trusty wonder under and fused it to the suede side of black garment leather, cut it out and then fused it to the velvet. I'm going to finish the applique first, then cut out the front and back pieces from the fabric, I'm hoping to avoid fraying and fuzzing and stretching that way.

I chose leather for several reasons. One, I was flipping through Patterns of Fashion one day and ran across the silk doublet with leather applique and thought it was pretty cool. I then thought, hey, that would be great because I wouldn't have to worry about fraying. And thirdly, decided it would add interesting texture to my gown.

I started the stitching on the bit on the back of the bodice, and soon got a rhythm down. The leather forced me to use a thimble consistently for one of the first times in my life.  However, I quickly realized that this would not make a good traveling project though, as it is much easier working at it over a flat surface.  The leather stretches a little when each stitch is pulled through, and has started to tug the fusing apart in places and with all the constant folding and stashing I will have to do with a travel project I decided this particular part isn't the best. So it is set aside for now and I have started the embroidery on my camicia.

Here's the front part of it, laid out within a tracing of the front bodice pattern piece;

As for the camicia, I've decided to go a more whimsical route than I usually do. I want to make this style;

But since I didn't want it to be so plain, but didn't want to put anything to fancy into it as I am just using muslin, I decided I would use of a collection of random cotton flosses I've been unintentionally collecting for a while and embroider some hunting dogs and a floral motif on the upper sleeves. The floral motif is a 'typical Elizabethan motif' from 'A Schole house for the Needle' by Richard Shorleyker (1624) via 'Blackwork Embroidery' by Elisabeth Geddes and Moyra McNeil. The hunting hounds are adapted of a pattern I found in a printed out 'Modelbuch' I got quite a while ago. So, random, not necessarily Italian, and not all from the right time period, but I like it.

I've got one sleeve traced out and ready to go, started on the top row. It will make a good travel project. We leave for Georgia Wednesday afternoon, so probably no more posts for a little while.

Cause I couldn't not start

So I broke down. I finished the arming doublet to the furthest point I could and finished the first camping dress. The other one is now in the UFO bin, hopefully not for too long though.

I worked out the mockup for my IRCC bodice, then laid it out on paper to trace the top edge. Then proceeded with measuring and plotting out the applique design as close as possible to that in the portrait. I filled it in with sharpie and pinned the front portion of it to my dummy for contemplation. It looks pretty good, but there are definitely a few things I need to tweak; straightening out the black lines and trying to make the design flow seamlessly over the shoulder. Trying to figure out how to make the bottom front corners of the design flow under the sleeves and not be just 'out there', if that makes sense.

I also got my camicia cut out last night. I decided on the style I want to do quite easily, but now cannot decide if I want to embroider or do lace insertion or if I want to do it by hand or by machine. As I am only using cotton I do not want to get too fancy with it, but also can't just have it plain. Decisions decisions.